Negotiating Earthly and Spiritual Duty: Female Martyrs and Their Families in Tudor England
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
MAY 2016 NEGOTIATING EARTHLY AND SPIRITUAL DUTY: FEMALE MARTYRS AND THEIR FAMILIES IN TUDOR ENGLAND CHARLOTTE SZEPTYCKI A thesis submitted to The University of Gloucestershire in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Master by Research in the Faculty of Media, Arts, and Technology May 2016 Word Count: 30,977 ABSTRACT The institution of the family was integral to the identity of all women in Tudor England. Yet the familial duties of some of the most noteworthy women have been neglected. These include sixty women who perished in the flames of the Marian persecution. This thesis offers a new insight into women’s roles, in this era, by treating female martyrs and confessors as wives, mothers, daughters and sisters. These radical and unruly women would never have been accepted as God’s witnesses if their martyrologist, John Foxe (1516/17-1587), had not moulded them into unremarkable but dutiful housewives. The families of female martyrs could be greatly affected by a female relative’s willingness to die for her faith. Children of martyrs could be inspired to follow in their mother’s footsteps and husbands to stay steadfast in their beliefs. Some of the consequences of a mother and wife’s religious deviance could also be fatal for their family and forever tarnish their reputation. Such women were cast as the new Eves of society by their confessional adversaries. Familial bonds could operate as support networks for female martyrs. By analysing Foxe’s Protestant martyrology alongside martyr’s letters, family advice manuals and Catholic critiques, this thesis demonstrates that a persecuted woman’s familial roles and relationships had to be carefully balanced alongside her spiritual obligations. Women forced to prioritise their devotion to a reformist religion over their familial duties could only do so because they were invested with God’s power. A woman’s martyrdom could be enhanced if she could be proved, in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, to have cared for her family to the best of her ability before being called to martyrdom. AUTHOR’S DECLARATION I declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the regulations of the University of Gloucestershire and is original except where indicated by specific reference in the text. No part of this thesis has been submitted as part of any other academic award. This thesis has not been presented to any other institution in the United Kingdom or overseas. Any views expressed in the thesis are those of the author and in no way represent those of the University. Signed……………………………. Date…30/05/16……………. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................................. i MOTHERS, WIVES AND MARTYRDOM: AN INTRODUCTION ............................. 1 1. MOULDING THE EARLY MODERN FEMALE MARTYR: GENDER, FAMILY AND THE MARTYROLOGIST .................................................................................... 13 2. MARITAL TIES AND SOCIAL DISORDER: COMMITMENT, COMMUNITY AND MARTYRDOM..................................................................................................... 28 3.THE JOURNEY FROM MOTHERHOOD TO MARTYRDOM: UNDERSTANDING MATERNAL SACRIFICE .......................................................... 51 MOTHERS, WIVES AND MARTYRDOM: CONCLUSION ...................................... 79 THESIS BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................ 86 APPENDIX ONE: BIOGRAPHIES OF MARIAN FEMALE MARTYRS .................. 92 APPENDIX TWO: TABLE OF POST-REFORMATION TUDOR FEMALE MARTYRS ................................................................................................................... 119 i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 3.1: ‘A lamentable spectacle of three women, with a sely infant brasting out of the mothers wombe, being first taken out of the fire, and cast in agayne, and so all burned together in the isle of Garnesey.’ Source: John Foxe, The first volume of the ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the actes and monumentes (London: John Daye, 1570), STC 11223, p.2129…………………………………………………………….54 Fig. 3.2: ‘The burning of Rose Allins hand, by Edmund Tyrell, as she was going to fetch drink for her Mother, lying sicke in her bedde.’ Source: John Foxe, The first volume of the ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the actes and monumentes (London: John Daye, 1570), STC 11223, p.2199……………………………………………………………..70 1 MOTHERS, WIVES AND MARTYRDOM: AN INTRODUCTION The first edition of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments was published in 1563 and it was subsequently published in three more editions during his lifetime. Foxe told the stories of fifty seven women who were burnt at the stake for heresy during the reign of Mary I (1553-58), and many more Protestant women who faced persecution during these turbulent years. Over half of the female martyrs were recorded in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments as being wives, and a significant number of these definitely left behind children after their executions. Other women died alongside their husbands and children or parents, such as Joan Lashford: [B]oth suffered for the same, first the man in the moneth of May, then the wife in Iuly after: and now the daughter in the moneth of Ianuary followed her parentes in the same Martyrdome.1 Foxe was not the only martyrologist of sixteenth-century England and neither were his female martyrs the only women to face persecution. In these years, Foxe had to use his text to prove that the Protestant men and women he presented in his stories were the true martyrs, not those candidates that were offered martyrdoms by his Catholic counterparts. The women portrayed in Foxe’s martyrology, ‘contented to runne from their husbands into…the dongion of heretickes’ were prime targets for his Catholic opposition aiming to expose Protestantism as a vehicle for social disorder.2 Not every woman who gained a place in Foxe’s martyrology was executed for her beliefs during the Marian persecution, but no woman’s story was safe from being attacked by Foxe’s Catholic adversaries, such as Robert Parsons and Thomas Harding. Every female martyr, as a result, had to be demonstrated to have negotiated effectively her spiritual and familial obligations to the best of their ability. By studying the relationships that existed between persecuted women and their family members, this thesis sheds light on how the language of female duty, both to God and to their household, could be used to enhance women’s position as martyrs in Foxe’s book. This demonstrates that female martyrs need 1 This example of families suffering together for Protestantism is taken from the account of Joan Lashford in John Foxe, The first volume of the ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the actes and monumentes of thynges passed in euery kynges tyme in this realme, especially in the Church of England principally to be noted (London: John Daye, 1570), STC 11223, p.2030. 2 Miles Huggarde, Displaying of Protestantes (London, 1556) STC 13558, p.75. 2 to be considered in a wider spiritual context, where women’s pieties and spiritual values started to operate separately from, and frequently could be stronger than, their male relatives during the reformation period. At first glance, the women willing to face death rather than conform to the official religion of Catholicism in Mary Tudor’s England represent every aspect of what the ideal Tudor woman should not be. They were vociferous in their rejection of Catholic teachings, especially the Sacrament of the Altar, disobedient to the husbands who attempted to force them to go to Church, denounced the authority of those in power, even in some cases that of the monarch, and had the knowledge to understand complex theological concepts without the benefit of having access to education and despite their limited literacy. Despite this, Foxe, as the most prominent English martyrological writer, was able to mould these unconventional and radical women into an alternative vision of the ideal. A large part of how Foxe managed to do this relied on him being able to prove that these women did not choose the path to martyrdom but were predestined to it. They were good and godly mothers, daughters, sisters and wives. These women, Foxe argued, did not want to sacrifice their families. In the words of one of Foxe’s most famous martyrs, Agnes Prest: ‘[s]o long as she was at libertie, she refused not neither husband, nor children’.3 In this light, the framework of the family was used to enhance and legitimise the martyrdom of otherwise ordinary Marian Protestant women. This thesis focuses on a selection of the women who were persecuted for their Protestant beliefs during the Catholic years of the 1550s. Not all of these women died for their faith but all were connected by their differing constructions as wife or mother in Foxe’s martyrology and other works, such as Thomas Brice’s poetic martyrology, Briefe Register, and Robert Parson’s seventeenth-century Catholic critique of Foxe’s work.4 The stories of these women show that their families could either help or hinder their aspirations to martyrdom in ways which have not previously been considered. Just as family members could effect a wife or mother’s journey to martyrdom, a woman’s devotion to a reformist faith could heavily impact upon the welfare, reputation, aspirations and identities of her spouse and children. 3 Foxe (1570), p.2249. 4 Robert Parsons, The Third Part of a Treatise Intituled of Three Conversions of England (St Omer, 1604) STC 19416; Thomas